I'd love the window to be bigger, I.E. optimized for full hd monitors. I feel like I could be seeing all metatiles without scrolling through them and also see more rooms at once actually a 2x zoom on the screen edit area and only one screen at a time would be great.Another feature that would be great is if it could load the rom directly instead of sepparate files. This would be great for hacking instead of development as everything already is on the rom. You'd just need to specify byte ranges in the rom for each specific thing so then you can save screen edits and metatile edits directly to the rom and test it right away. The way it is I need to save the map file, open an hex editor, remove the old map section and paste the map file's content in there everytime I want to test it.

That out of the way, I just need to say, this tool is FANTASTIC!!! I have already gotten it to work with super pitfall within an hour or so (not the attributes because in super pitfall they are not bit packed, it's 1 byte per metatile). It's very usable with just one palette anyway, so very very impressive work there, thanks!

edit: I have manuallly converted the attributes to bit packed sequence and it looks so nice. Thanks again!

edit2: sorry about my noobishness, but a simple batch file "copy /b file1 + file2 + file3 finalfile.nes" resolves the issue with quick testing. Now if only we could edit the interface a bit

Author:

never-obsolete [ Tue Jun 14, 2016 7:22 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

I'll post a newer version of the program when I have access to my computer. Some of the additions include a larger viewing mode and an animation editor. I can add a zoom feature to the map editor.

Author:

nesrocks [ Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:11 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

Great! I just thought of another desirable feature: it'd be nice to be able to edit the metatile's attribute and have them saved to the mtp file.

Author:

nesrocks [ Sun Jul 24, 2016 10:38 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

Any news?

I've been using this tool non-stop on my super pitfall hack, it's just too good I have organized the rooms from the original game and from my hack.

It would be interesting though if the editor could take a screen type map and display the screens based on another "big map" file. For example, the way it is now it displays screens sequentially screen 1, screen 2, screen 3, etc. But it could take another file that organizes these screens in a different order. This would be perfect for map previewing and could even be used to generate images of the map.

Here is how it is in Super Pitfall nes:

This is the "big" map. Each of these bytes represet a screen (or room). Notice how some rooms repeat. The whole map is 16 rooms wide and 13 rooms high.

And then there's the metatile sequence. It works the same as the map type in MapEd Pro, breaking itself into rooms, sequentially. The first 16x15 metatiles form the first room (00) and so on.

So the way I have been editting the map is on each room separately, which is great enough, but if the editor displayed the real map that'd be insanely powerful.

Notice how the rooms are not positioned the same way they are in the game in relation to each other. I have set the map to be 31 screens wide and 2 screens tall so it would display 4 rooms at a time in the editor.

Author:

nesrocks [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:47 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

I have put gng's level 1 on mapedpro, for testing.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, and I don't want to sound rude. The tool is incredible, I can't stress this enough, but could we get the source code? For hacking it would be incredible to edit the ROM directly. So instead of feeding it different files it would have fields to inform the editor about the offsets containing each data.

For example, instead of telling it to load a map file you would simply load the ROM and tell it "map starts on address 0x8000".

Having to work with separate files is not ideal when hacking a game. I understand this is the nesdev, not the neshack forums, so I'm just making a plea as there isn't a tool like this anywhere.

Author:

thefox [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 12:53 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

nesrocks wrote:

For example, instead of telling it to load a map file you would simply load the ROM and tell it "map starts on address 0x8000".

You might be able to make a small tool in Python or whatnot to initially extract the data files from the ROM at a given offset, and to inject them back. That would add just one extra step on top of saving the map in the tool.

thefox: yeah, that is one of the possible workarounds (mine was to do it manually). The point is that a tool can be a lot more powerful and get a lot more users if it is self contained.It would take me a long time to learn how to program this myself. So instead of doing that I prefered to do it manually as this was probably my only hack, at least in a long time. My requests are more because I'm seeing the potential here and I know that accessibility would mean more and better hacks being produced. It is of course up to the author to do whatever he wants with his work though, and I defend that.

Author:

never-obsolete [ Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:01 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

Updated first post with v0.30.0. The big changes were adding an animation editor, defining objects and adding them as actors, and a basic text editor.

See the readme for a full list of changes and bug fixes.

Author:

gauauu [ Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:42 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

This looks amazing.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out whether it doesn't run correctly on my computer, or if I just can't figure out how to use it.

I create a new project successfully, but then nothing I click really does anything. I think maybe I need to start with a new MCF? Doing file->new->new MCF doesn't do anything. New->Map prompts me for sizes, but doesn't do anything after that, the other entries under New don't do anything.

I can edit the map header, but if I try to edit the MCF I get "Run-time error '76' Path not found" and it crashes.

Is something not working, or am I just being too obtuse to use it properly?

Author:

never-obsolete [ Sat Oct 21, 2017 9:44 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Tool: MapEd Pro

Sorry for the delayed response. I have been fixing some bugs and writing up a user manual, so hopefully that will help.